Playacting
by Iellix
Summary: They're having fun, playacting, pretending. Because in disguise, the rules are different. A bit of silly fluff-fic, AU for S.3, later smut.
1. Chapter 1

Blame Casy Dee and iEvenstar Estel for making me write this fic. Talk of a day at the Renaissance faire and that Connor would love going to such a festival, and what would happen if he saw Abby in a corset—and the next thing you know I have a ravenously evil plotbunny. If you don't like it, _blame them!_ If you do, I'll take the credit.

There isn't really a reasonable time-setting for this story. It takes place in some kind of alternate S3 universe, I guess—the events of the S2 finale happened and Stephen is gone, but Cutter is still alive, Jenny is still there, and they've still got all the S3 people on the team. Becker, Sarah, and Danny. And for some reason Abby and Connor got together. Don't read too much into it, for goodness sake. Just enjoy a silly story.

Disclaimer: As per usual, I own nothing.

o...o

"I'm really starting to hate this place," Abby declared, flopping down tiredly next to Connor on the sofa. He was on his laptop, clicking away in a chat with Sarah back home. Their only connection to the Arc was through emails and instant messaging chats, for the last three weeks spent in the US during their attachment to 'FARA', the Federal Anomaly Research Administration.

Of course, it was incredibly silly to think that the only place anomalies were popping up was in England. Even _without_ the interference of Helen Cutter, anomalies were naturally occurring, and seemingly everywhere. On a continent as vast and—surprisingly—empty as North America, anomalies could pop up and disappear time and again without any great population of people knowing what was going on. A little digging on Cutter and Connor's parts had uncovered America's answer to the Arc, and they made an agreement to exchange some people to study their various research findings and techniques. Lester was _more_ than happy to get rid of Abby and Connor to, quote, "Let them be a couple of teenagers in love on someone _else's_ time for a while."

In exchange for them, they were positively _tickled_ to learn, the Arc had gotten two female members of FARA: a tough and loudmouthed ex-Army doctor from Philadelphia called Isabel Trujillio, and a true-blue Texas tomboy named Lucy Judd, who reportedly carried an antique rifle nicknamed 'Grandma Moses'. Lester was _not happy,_ which just made the whole experience that much better.

It had been a long three weeks so far, though, and there were still seven more to go.

The problem stemmed from the fact that the FARA work shifts worked a lot differently than Connor and Abby were used to at the Arc; rather than being on-call at all times, they had four days of 24-hour work duty followed by two days off. The '96-hour day', as it was colloquially known, was pretty exhausting but having a guaranteed two days to rest at the end of it made it all work out. There was a part-time supplemental team of researchers and field agents who worked those two days, ensuring that no anomaly sighting went unchecked and nobody dropped dead from exhaustion.

The major problem wasn't working hours—it was finding something to do with themselves when they _weren't_ working, which proved surprisingly difficult. After working for years with the Arc and barely having any time to themselves, they'd forgotten what they used to do with their time. The pair were set up in a small apartment at FARA's expense, and had a car, because it was difficult to get around any non-metropolitan area without one. She and Connor had explored the surrounding area a few times and found approximately _nothing_ of interest there or _anywhere_ within twenty miles. The further they went, the more it all looked like farmland. They took a couple of trips into Washington DC to look at the museums, one of which held the original C3-PO and R2-D2, but museums and zoos had their natural lifespan as recreational activities. They twice got spectacularly lost in the DC labyrinth and ended up in dangerous parts of the city.

In desperation, Connor looked on a map and saw that New York looked pretty reasonably close to their current location—they could make a day-trip of it, he said. But after they found out that the map was deceptive and misleading and that in reality there was more distance between their current location and New York than there was between London and _Brussels,_ they went off the idea.

And now they were bored, and antsy.

"It's really no wonder these people like anomalies so much," Connor grumbled. "Even bad-crazy days are better than being bored." He clicked a few more keys on his laptop. "Sarah says 'hi'. According to her, they all went out for drinks the other night with the attachment ladies and Isabel drank Danny under the table."

Abby raised her eyebrows and grinned. Nobody could drink like Danny Quinn, apparently except for Isabel Trujillio.

When she snuggled up to Connor on the sofa, he swiftly lost interest in his laptop. In the wake of Oliver Leek's mad plan, Stephen's death, and _Caroline,_ he and Abby had grown closer, taking solace in each other and the members of the Anomaly Team. Their relationship with each other grew, changed. By the time it became physical, Abby wondered why she had bothered pushing Connor away for so many years. He was the sweetest man she'd ever known—sometimes hopeless, sometimes silly, but always well-meaning and wonderful. That he was an amazingly attentive lover didn't hurt either.

He put his arm around her shoulders and rubbed her bare arm, pressed a kiss to her forehead, but he stayed quiet.

"You homesick?" She asked.

"A bit," he admitted shyly. "I've never been bothered when we've had to camp out or if I've been away from home before, but I've never been this far away for this _long,_ either."

Connor, in jest, referred to himself as 'radiantly unsophisticated' and admitted he'd rarely even crossed the English Channel. The last time he'd left England was to go to Portugal with his mates to celebrate the end of high school, where he claimed he got so sunburned he resembled a traffic cone. But he was homesick here, thousands of miles from home on another continent—sometimes it felt like another _planet—_and unsure of himself. During working hours he didn't think about it, because his mind was otherwise occupied. When left to their own devices, though, he found he missed the tight-knit relationship he had with the other members of the Arc. The people here in the Washington FARA office were all very nice and personable, but Connor still didn't feel quite at home with them.

"It's okay, you know," she said, reaching up to caress his cheek and rub her fingers through his stubble. "I miss home, too."

"It's silly," he said with a scowl. "I'm a grown man, not a little kid."

Abby paused. "You know I cried nearly every night my first year away at university?"

Connor startled. "What?"

"I'd never been away from home that long before. And I was only two hours away."

"You never told me that."

She leaned up and kissed his forehead. "Point is—everyone gets homesick. So don't worry about it, all right?"

Their kiss was interrupted by a knock at the apartment door. Abby had a sneaking suspicion it was probably the door-to-door religion people or someone similarly annoying—they didn't exactly have friends who came to visit here, though a few of the other members of the FARA team lived in the surrounding apartment complex. Abby answered it anyway, and found herself looking straight at a head of black hair and getting a wet dog-nose thrust in her hand.

Zoe was a field agent and one of the most senior members of the FARA team. She was all spitfire, sarcasm, and a no-nonsense attitude that made her feared and respected among her fellow anomaly researchers. She had her great big Alaskan Malamute on his lead and was holding the dog back from tearing into their flat.

"Popo, you dumb dog! Sit down!"

The dog stopped jerking around and promptly sat, his big fuzzy feet splayed out and his tail sweeping the floor.

"There's not been an emergency, has there?" Abby asked, worried.

"Naw, if there was they'd've called your phones. Actually, your man-thing told me you guys were at a bit of a loose end around here when you weren't working."

"Man-thing?" She repeated.

"I never did like the word 'boyfriend'."

"Abbs? Who is—oh, hi Zoe," Connor said cheerfully once he saw who was at the door. He and Zoe got along very well because she liked the same cheesy sci-fi and fantasy worlds and could 'talk geek' with him.

"Heya," she said back. "I heard you two were getting bored during your off-days, so I thought I'd see if you wanted a profoundly bizarre day out."

Abby narrowed her eyes. "Oh yeah? Doing what?"

"It's Renaissance Fair season," Zoe said, as if this explained everything. "There's a huge one near Annapolis—it's good fun, seems up Connor's alley. Me and Dingo and a bunch of friends like to make a day of it whenever we can." 'Dingo' was Dave, the resident biologist. "It's great fun, and I thought I'd ask if you wanted to come with us. We've got some extra tickets and some unoccupied car seats."

Abby didn't know what the hell Zoe was talking about, but Connor seemed interested straight away, his face lighting up the way it did when he saw a new dinosaur or had a new technological toy to play with.

"Is it any good?" He asked.

"Well, it's the biggest and longest-running in the country," she said. "I can give you the website if you wanna look for yourself, or bore you to death with pictures of our antics. The offer's there if you want it and you don't have to decide _right this second._ Just let me know before tonight, all right? It's not like you don't know where to find me." Zoe lived in the neighbouring building with Popo, who was now licking Abby's hand for food molecules.

"What's this web address?" Connor asked. Of course he would ask that. She wrote it down on his hand with the pen she was using to keep her hair up—Abby had never seen someone consistently use a pen as a hair accessory like Zoe did—and went on her way before Popo got restless again.

"Oh, hey, one more thing—if you want to come, we'll get you some clothes to wear. The rule is, if you come with us you can't come naked."

Abby did a double-take straight out of a Warner Brother's cartoon. _"What?"_

She cackled. "It's a colloquialism. 'Naked' means you're in street-clothes. We can't be seen with people in street-clothes, it's bad for our reputation."

Connor went to his computer and looked up everything he could on this fair-festival, and seemed delighted with what he saw. Abby leaned over the back of the couch and read over his shoulder. He was scanning a huge gallery of photos evidently taken at this place—they showed people in various fantasy and loosely historical dress, eating and drinking and looking generally quite amused.

"Oh, god, is this one of those places where people dress up and pretend it's the Middle Ages?" She asked.

"Looks like!" He said cheerfully. "Looks like good fun, though. I wanna go."

"Was there ever any doubt?"

"Maybe a bit," he said. "These things tend to fall into two categories—totally pathetic, or fucking awesome. This one looks several different kinds of _fucking awesome."_

He continued to browse through pictures and short video clips and despite everything, Abby found herself intrigued by what she was seeing. What the hell, she decided—why not? If nothing else, it would be an interesting new experience and a day out. And if they were required to 'dress', then Connor in tights would make it all worth it.


	2. Chapter 2

I got a little too carried away with the clothing descriptions in this chapter. It was kind of necessary, though. Anyone who attends a Renaissance faire of any large scale with any regularity will recognize the importance of appearance—the aesthetics are a huge part of the fun, and historical accuracy can hang itself in favour of fantasy. (To put this in perspective, one of my favourite faire regulars at my faire is a guy who attends several weekends a season in a full raccoon fursuit _and_ faire gear over it. He's adorable! And he dances.) Anyway, the Abby-getting-frisky plot continues after this chapter, so enjoy the pageantry and sit tight!

o...o

The last time Abby could remember fussing over her choice of outfits and raiding someone else's closet for clothes was when she was 21 and going to a friend's hen night at some club or other. The bride-to-be dressed her in a PVC miniskirt and she remembered getting fawned over by some creep, whom she then stabbed in the groin with her high heel.

This was a totally different circumstance, but there looked to be an awful lot of club-wear in Zoe's closet. She had an impressive abundance of colourful clothes—floaty skirts, gauzy blouses, painful-looking corsets, leather, scarves, and some things she couldn't readily identify. She just kept pulling more and more out and laying it out on the floor and bed. The woman was quite serious when she said that they had to 'dress' to attend this festival. Connor was with Dingo in the flat opposite, borrowing from what Abby presumed was probably an equally vast array of male clothing.

"Here, try these boots on—looks like we're about the same size, so they should fit," she said, tossing Abby the weirdest-looking pair of blue leather 'boots' she'd ever seen. They came up to her knees but only covered the back and sides of her calves; they were open and laced across the front, like a weird leg-corset.

"Yeah, they fit," she said, fussing with the laces. "Did I do them up properly? It looks like a huge piece is missing!"

"No, you did them properly. They're supposed to look like that. You can borrow my Catskills if you really want, but I guarantee those won't fit you." She picked up a skirt and tossed it on the growing pile on the bed. "D'you want pants or a skirt? You can have both if you want."

"Just how much stuff do you _have?"_ Abby asked, still amazed at the entire wardrobe of fantasy clothing laid out around the room.

"An embarrassing amount. I did the math once, I've got enough stuff here to wear a different costume every day for more than a year."

Abby snorted into her coffee—Zoe was nice enough to feed her breakfast when she dragged her into the apartment.

"To be fair, I've been collecting this stuff for years."

"How long?"

"Since I was fourteen."

She got a second cup of coffee and picked through the clothes. The blue shoes she'd been given were odd and she tried the 'Catskills', as the other shoes had been called, but Zoe was right and they didn't fit her at all. Apparently they'd been made just for her, so Abby stuck with the weird boots that fit properly and decided to build her day's clothing around them.

She picked up a blue skirt with a V-shaped piece of tapestry at the top, which she liked until she realized it was slit to the waist on both sides. She was about to put it down and find something else when she decided that if she was going to participate in this silliness, then she might as well go all the way. She stripped her jeans off and figured out how to get into the skirt. Fortunately it was big enough at the top that she could cinch the laces closed at the sides and avoid showing her knickers to everyone. It was kinda sexy, she decided—long and floaty at the front and back and open at the sides. Connor would drool, and that made her smile privately.

She heard voices coming from the front of the flat and turned to see two women, fully dressed in their fantasy garb. One she recognized as one of the computer technicians from FARA; the other, wearing various shades of green and sporting and impressive pair of pointed ears, wasn't familiar at all.

"Oh good, you're decent," Zoe said. "You already know Katherine—" she indicated their co-worker, who nodded shortly. "This is Olivia, we've known each other since we were kids. Olivia, Abby—she's on attachment from England."

"Hi," the Olivia-elf said, shifting a bundle of _something_ under one arm and offering her hand; Abby shook it. She was a full head shorter and had dimples and looked so much like an _actual_ elf that she momentarily forgot that the ears were clearly prosthetics.

"Hello. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," she said, a bare hint of a northern English accent in her voice. "Zoe said you've never been to a faire before—said I should bring some of my stuff in case you needed anything."

Abby ended up taking the shirt right off Olivia's back, a stomach-baring black leather job that was open in the back and wouldn't have looked at all out of place at a rave. It was made to look ragged, like some kind of wild-woman fantasy outfit. The woman had been more than happy to hand it over and then took off her headscarf and folded it a few times before tying it around her chest. Apparently modesty was not the order of the day.

Abby's own ensemble was finished off with a heavy blue-silver velvet cape that barely came down to her thighs and a long scarf tied around her hips, to which was attached a leather bag that she could carry her things in. They gave her a thicker velvety scarf to tuck into her makeshift belt, saying that if she got chilly she could open it up and wrap it around her shoulders. They even gave her jewellery, leather and bangles and strings of bells and a pair of earrings made from peacock eyes.

"_Very_ impressive," Zoe said, looking insufferably pleased with herself as Abby leaned over the sink mirror in the bathroom to do her makeup. Over the top was good, they said, but she just did her normal black eyeliner rather than experiment. But she had to admit, she thought as she stepped back to get a better look at herself—she _did_ look pretty hot dressed like this. In a weird fantasy-adventure kind of way. Just Connor's style.

The ride to the fair itself took quite some time, and Abby was more than happy to use such time to nap. The boys, clearly dressed and ready before they were, had already left in a separate car and they'd meet them at the fairgrounds. She couldn't help but wonder—and be a little anxious to see—what they'd dressed Connor in.

The girls woke her up when they pulled into a big field full of hundreds of other cars and dozens of people in various costumes putting their final preparations in place for a day at this Renaissance faire. Abby felt an immediate sense of relief, seeing that they were hardly going to be in the minority being dressed up; she also felt a little proud of herself when a handful of women in terrible-looking getups walked past.

"Ten to one they're at one of the pubs," Katherine said once they made it through the gates. "I need to go find one of the corset guys to lace me up."

"We coulda done that for you in the car park," Olivia said.

"They do it better. I want my boobs hitched up to my chin!"

"All right, fine, go," Zoe said, waving her off. "We'll catch up with you later."

Abby followed the remaining two women as they expertly navigated their way across the crowded fairgrounds. She kept one eye on their backs so she wouldn't get hopelessly lost, but she was also taking in everything around her. She wasn't sure what she _had_ expected of this place, but it wasn't _this._ The grounds were entirely in the woods, making the already cool October morning even nippier. There were little shops with painted signs and street actors playing characters. Of course, some of them might not have been street actors at all. As she'd been told before getting here, people 'got into the spirit of things' and began to take part in the playacting themselves. The idea of making up a real-life character to portray at a place like this seemed silly to her, until now. It wasn't hard to understand now. It was easy to get sucked in.

She nearly collided with a man drinking coffee with one hand and casually juggling three beanbags with the other.

Olivia and Zoe grabbed her hands and carefully steered her away.

The 'pub' was just an open-air pavilion with two bars; there was a stage in the front but there were just a couple of little kids in kilts messing about on it. They explained that various bands and singers put shows on in this pub and that it was often standing-room-only.

"Unless you sit on the wall."

"Or behind the stage to look up their kilts," Olivia added with a cheeky grin. Abby looked at her funny. "What? It's divine retribution for every time a guy's tried to get a look at my ass up my skirt!" She couldn't help but laugh at it, because there was a certain mad logic to her silliness.

Then Olivia-the-elf went off with a handful of other people she knew, with the promise to find them again later, and Zoe sat Abby on the low wall next to the stage.

"Sit tight here for a sec, I just wanna go say hi to Liam behind the bar, he's an old friend of mine and he may've seen the guys. I'd offer to introduce you, but I guarantee the first thing he'll do is make some dirty sexual comment and you'll beat his face in."

Was she _really_ that easy to figure, Abby wondered? But she didn't like uninvited sexual comments, so she perched herself on the wall and waited, watching people walk past. A pack of obnoxious-sounding teenage girls walked by in their goth-wear; a small group of older men, all fully costumed and looking quite dashing, stopped to politely tip their hats to her, making her giggle and blush; two women dressed as fairies came next, wielding giant bubble-wands and leaving trails of soap bubbles in their wake. The shirtless guys with chest tattoos and kilts were kinda hot, she thought, and the lone man, wearing for whatever reason a _dress,_ gave her a little curtsy.

She watched the people inside the open pavilion, too. Zoe was leaning on the bar, chatting with a guy with a cigarette in his lips. Further up the bar were three more men, all facing one another and chatting and drinking from pewter mugs. All of them were kitted out, too, and she found herself staring at one of them; she couldn't see his face but she could see a good deal of everything else. He was wearing a long leather cape, black and reds and dark purples, with the same raw, ragged look as her leather top, and a black tricorn hat with long white ostrich plumes sweeping off. Under the hem of his cape she saw his black-and-red knee-high boots and part of his loose red trousers. His gestures when he talked were big and he had a swagger when he moved.

A regular musketeer, she thought. Some dashing rogue or other that Connor would probably pretend he was. She wondered what Dingo and whoever else was with them had dressed him as. Hoping for leggings or tights was probably _too _much to hope for, but Connor _did_ have nice legs that would have been worth showing off. And the cutest arse in the northern hemisphere. Plus, if he was wearing leggings or something similarly tight, then _everyone_ who saw him would know _exactly_ how lucky she was. She grinned lasciviously at her own dirty thoughts. Then the guy in the red cape and plumed hat turned a little and she got a look at his profile, and Abby felt her heart do an incredibly enthusiastic backflip.

It _was_ Connor! _Her_ Connor, dressed head to toe in full regalia and looking very comfortable and at home with himself, too. And drop-dead gorgeous. Was that _eyeliner_ he was wearing? He was approximately _lethal_ dressed like that.

His eyes went right past her as he scanned the crowd, then his head snapped back in a double-take, eyes wide. His mouth even popped open a little bit. She hopped off the wall and slinked over to him, a cheeky little sashay in her step that she knew he would notice; the bells at her ankles and around her waist clinked in time with her steps.

"Hello there," she purred.

"Wow."

She grinned and planted her hands on her hips and cocked her hip to one side. He looked over her slowly, his eyes lingering on her bare midriff. Abby didn't dress girlishly very often—certainly she never wore anything this overtly sexy. He'd seen her naked and in her underwear countless times before, but there was something about this tantalizing getup—slit skirt, bare belly—that just tickled his fancy. She was fairly certain she saw a little drool.

"I take it you like what you see."

"I'll let you know once I've got enough blood back in my brain to say for sure."

This, she decided, was going to be _fun._


	3. Chapter 3

Finally got the third chapter up! Woo! No smut this time, it was going to make the chapter too long so I decided to make the smut its own chapter. Both Abby and Connor are getting pretty cheeky here. I find this happens a lot to people at Renaissance Faires—when they dress up, they just go to town and _own it_ and it's awesome. Connor would probably do the same thing and, after a little Liquid Encouragement, Abby would as well. Either way, they're enjoying themselves and each _other_ very much.

Next chapter will be smutty! Fair warning for those of you who don't want to read it, and also a head's up that the story won't appear on the main archive after the next update. Enjoy this chapter! Reviews are, as always, dearly appreciated but never demanded.

o...o

There were a number of factors at work in the sudden change of Abby's behaviour—she went from being apprehensive and a little unsure of what to do or expect at this fair to getting quite caught up in the whole thing and tormenting Connor for giggles. Part of it was undoubtedly due to the flask of a concoction called a 'snakebite' that Zoe slipped to her before she and Connor took off on their own—a mix of cider and lager. A little liquid courage never hurt and she was quite warm and bubbly in short order, cheerful and loosened up with her cheeks flushing ever so slightly. She was always a lot less 'old' when she had a little to drink. The rest of the change was probably the whole atmosphere around them. She'd always thought these playacting things were weird and a little... pathetic. But now that she was in the thick of it, it was easy to see how people got so into it.

It was hard _not_ to get into it, really. It was nearly impossible to tell the difference between people who worked there and those who just attended fully kitted out, and they stood and watched an extended argument between an attending woman and one of the street vendors that couldn't have been funnier if it was scripted.

A lost-looking couple in street-clothes asked them how to get to a stage, and Abby was about to snap at them and tell them that they didn't work here and they didn't know where this stage was when Connor gave them directions.

"Just 'round that way, up the hill and follow the trail—it's off to the left," he said, gesturing vaguely off into the distance. The couple didn't even thank him as they set off.

"How do you know your way around here already?" She asked. "You get lost in videogame towns."

He laughed. "I don't know my way around here. But if they're going to assume I work here and not ask politely, then I'm entitled to get them _really_ lost." Then he looked at her with his head slanted slightly downward and the brim of his hat shading his face; he gave her a grin that made a storm of butterflies erupt in her belly.

"I must say, this is a level of unmitigated cheek I'm unaccustomed to seeing in you, Connor Temple."

He knocked the hat back with a flick of his fingers and shrugged. "It's the hat. I think I'm channelling Jack Sparrow or something."

She stood tall and kissed him, not particularly caring if her lipstick rubbed off on him. "Bloody pirate."

He wrapped his arms around her and slid his hands up her back under her cloak, and when he reached the criss-crossed laces behind her he stopped, tracing them lightly and making her come out all over in goosebumps.

"Exactly how much of you is covered without that cape?" He asked, his voice a little rougher now as he realized how _little_ she was wearing.

"Not much more than half," she said with a smirk, to which Connor's response was an incredibly unmanly squeak.

She giggled mirthfully, then looped her arm around his waist and he put his around her shoulders and they set off through the crowd. Zoe and Dingo, who was wearing red leggings and a red-brown tartan kilt and showing off the elaborate lion-and-dragon tattoo on his back, took them around the fairgrounds for a while, helping them learn their way around. The ease with which their hosts interacted with the other costumed fairgoers and the street vendors and the street actors—and it was still pretty hard to tell who worked there and who didn't—made Abby's inhibitions slowly slip away. Connor's, it seemed, had checked his at the gate. He walked with a swagger straight out of the 'Pirates' trilogy and began to argue back with the people who heckled them.

"You! With the fabulous hat!" A barker called down from a balcony. Their group stopped to look up at him and he was nodding to Connor. "Yeah, you! How much for thy wench? I need a blonde for my collection!"

Abby's eyes went wide and she tried, and failed, to come up with some snappy comeback.

"And what would _you_ know what to do with a woman, _madam?"_ Connor called back up, craning his neck to look up and keeping a hand on his hat.

"With a hat like _that_ I should be asking you the same question!"

"You mean _this_ hat?" He asked, flicking the leather up with his fingers. "This hat that says 'I have sexually satisfied every woman I have ever met, including your sister'?"

The man threw his head back and laughed, quaking on his perch on the balcony. "Well played, sir!"

Connor swept off his hat and bowed dramatically; when he stood he put an arm around her waist and kissed her forehead; she turned and buried her face in his fluffy shirt and laughed heartily once the man was out of sight.

"What's got _into_ you, Conn?"

"Dunno," he answered. "Is it... is it bad?"

"No. I like it." She stood up taller and kissed his lips, a little chaste peck. "I could get used to this level of cheekiness in you!"

It wasn't so much the cheekiness, she thought—it was the confidence. Connor wasn't putting on an _act,_ strictly speaking; he wasn't playing a character, he was just being himself. An uncharacteristically confident and self-assured version of himself, but himself nonetheless. She'd rarely seen that kind of confidence in him before, and she decided it made him ten times as sexy and just the eensiest bit dangerous.

They stumbled across a few stages in time to catch some of the shows. One was a sword-swallower and magician, and another was called a 'comedy crossbow' show, which made Abby laugh so hard she cried and Connor offered her the sleeve of his shirt to blot her eyes on. During both shows, people in the audience in street clothes were deliberately picked on for 'audience participation', which made both of them glad that they were dressed up; they blended in better this way.

"Abby," he rasped, sitting rigid on his perch. They'd taken refuge on the shady boardwalk, away from the afternoon sun. Connor's leather cloak, while beautiful, was extremely heavy and got hot very quickly so the shade was most welcome. "What are you doing?"

"Huh?" She tilted her head, confused. "What _am_ I doing?"

"With your hand. Under my cloak."

It took her a few minutes to figure out she'd been petting his shirt for quite some time. It was soft and fluffy, like down feathers or rabbit fur, and she couldn't really help it. She stroked across his back and his waist.

"Oh. I didn't realize." Then she shrugged. "Your shirt's nice and fluffy. And soft."

"Yeah, well, it's about the only thing that _is_ right now."

"Oh, _really?"_

"Fuck, I shouldn't have said that."

"Why not?" She idly tugged his shirt up and traced circles on his lower back, which she knew he liked. A _lot._

"Abby..."

"Mm-hmm?" She nuzzled his shoulder. He smelled like his cologne and the leather from his cloak and she found it very, very sexy. She arched up and gently, teasingly bit the side of his neck and then traced the teethmarks she left with the tip of her tongue.

"I'm really having a tough time coming up with reasons you shouldn't be doing that," he said in a low voice. His accent was always slightly thicker when he got worked up—sometimes she could reduce him to an incoherent puddle of Yorkshire slang.

"I can tell."

He dragged her off the edge of the wide gravel road and behind two fat trees, pinning her back against the coarse bark and kissing her roughly. He'd knocked his hat off and it fell into the hay and leaf litter at their feet. She mewled, moaned, and let him take the lead, which he did quite enthusiastically. His kisses were demanding and insistent and he fairly _commanded _her to kiss him back. She heard herself give soft little squeaks every time he touched her, his fingers digging into her warm, soft flesh.

She was so used to being the one in charge in their relationship that this sudden shift was surprising—and thrilling. Most of the time he took her cues, waited for her to make the first move, and only changed at her urging or with her permission. For the most part she enjoyed being the dominant one, but _this—_oh, she could get used to this. He held her arms down by her sides and crushed her back against the tree, holding her back and down and quite immobile with his whole weight pressed into her. He kissed hard down her neck, nipping on his way down to the round swell of her bosom. He flicked his tongue under the top hem of the low-cut leather. She whimpered and mewled as he went, and when he came back up and bit her bottom lip, she turned to liquid from the feet up.

"Could have you right here," he growled, breathing heavily.

"Oh _really?"_ She purred, amazed at how even she was keeping her voice, even as her insides melted from his tactile attention.

"Yes," he answered, drawing the syllable out and turning it into a hiss. "You're like a fantasy on legs. That skirt slit all the way to the waist, that leather thing—_you._ You're beautiful, Abbs. Beautiful and sexy and... and perfect."

His eyes were closed as he nuzzled the column of her neck with sudden and unexpected tenderness, sliding the very tip of his tongue down her throat to her collarbones. She tossed her head back, inviting him to kiss her neck some more, but instead he stopped, his mouth hovering over the delicate skin of her neck; he breathed slowly and heavily, making her come out all over in goosebumps.

Even up to his eyeballs in lust like this, Connor still managed to be sweet and wonderful to her. Every time they were together, whether sex was involved or not, he always tried his hardest to make her feel special and beautiful. He touched her with a kind of delicacy and reverence that made her feel like a priceless piece of art. Most of all, he wanted her to see—and always remember—that he loved her, totally and utterly.

He pressed his fingers into her bare back and rubbed slowly down—_god_ that felt good.

"I could still take you right here," he growled.

"What's stopping you?"

After a pause he answered—with his face still buried in her neck and his mouth still working her—"A few dozen public indecency charges, sex-offender status for corrupting the eight thousand kids in attendance, and the threat of deportation. Something tells me that my pirate-y charm and sexy accent won't work on United States law enforcement."

She laughed heartily, then stroked his chest and stomach, her fingers toying with the fuzzy-softness of his shirt. She went further and massaged his lower abdomen with one hand, just above his groin, and the inside of his right thigh with the other.

"_Unh!_ Abby!"

He looked around nervously, but nobody in the vicinity seemed to notice or care that they were there. Certainly nobody was paying attention to them and they were fairly well-hidden where they were standing. Her hand went a little higher on his thigh and his breathing got quicker, until she slipped the hand between his legs. Then he sharply sucked in a breath and just held it.

She gave him an affectionate pat and smiled wickedly.

"Abby, you're gonna make me—" here he stopped to yelp softly when she gave his steadily hardening cock a gentle squeeze. She cupped is balls and rubbed his crotch and he released a shaky breath with a long, syllableless moan of pleasure. He was about two seconds from creaming in his pants, he just _knew _it...

And then she was gone. Her hands, her mouth, the warmth of her body—she'd slipped out from between him and the tree trunk and took several steps away from him. He had a very pink face and his trousers were impressively tented in the front, which she couldn't help but stare at, licking her teeth like a carnivore staring at a feast.

"What are you trying to do to me?" He moaned piteously.

"Nothing," she answered, just as wicked as he'd been being all morning. "That's the idea."

"You evil little minx."

She came close to him just long enough to kiss his cheek before taking his hand and pulling him back up onto the road and towards the crowds.

"C'mon, Connor! There's lots more to do here."

Evil. She was being evil. He struggled to quickly do up his cloak and reposition his belt-bag to hide that whole tent-pole problem before following her obediently.

He tried to get a little payback on her, teasing her as much as he could in a public venue. He pressed barely-there butterfly kisses to her neck and the soft and delicate insides of her wrists; he tickled her bare back and bare belly and her neck and all the bare skin on her chest with the tip of the little ermine fur that he took off his belt. Abby had a _thing_ for fur and furry things, which he'd found out over the winter when he was wearing his fur-trimmed gloves and they were fooling around in the back of one of the Arc trucks. One of the things that got her off the fastest was feeling his hair tickling her belly and her legs and playing her fingers through it when he went down on her, head buried between her thighs as he brought her off again and again.

But this time the fur on her bare skin wasn't working and she quickly turned the tables on him. She rubbed against him, making sure to rub against his straining erection and keeping it _quite_ active. Then she flounced ahead of him, tossing her cape back over her shoulders and giving a little twirl, making her cape fly out behind her and her skirt float out around her hips, showing Connor—as well as quite a few other people—her bright green panties and a substantial amount of bare leg.

But they were both thoroughly enjoying their wicked teasing of each other and took it all in stride.

Abby stopped in one of the shops, just because it was full of leather accessories and it smelled wonderful. She liked the smell of leather, too—he catalogued that away for later.

They browsed the shop, Connor admiring the leather-covered notebooks with various designs burned into their covers; there were also various pieces in the shop featuring animal claws and skulls. One necklace had a nautilus shell incorporated into it; another had fossilized shark's teeth. A wooden chopstick, a hairstick, had a preserved owl claw on the end. It was morbid stuff, but fascinating.

He sat on the edge of a massive wood jardinière, containing a full-grown adult tree growing straight up through the middle of the shop and watched Abby admire a leather corset with a pirate treasure map pattern on it. It was an under-bust corset, he noted. She'd look good in that corset. Without anything underneath it. And those red high-heel boots she had at home but never wore because they were impractical. And the frilly white knickers she only wore when she was trying to tease him by wearing a short-short skirt...

There was an enormous rush of blood in his groin, but he'd basically already accepted that he was going to have this hard-on for the rest of the day as long as Abby was dressed like that and there were women about with their breasts hitched up.

He turned away to look at anything _but_ Abby and ended up with an eyeful as he saw what was located in the back of the little shop.

Bondage gear. A whole wall, from the floor to the ceiling, full of whips and collars and handcuffs and paddles and floggers and gags...

He made a little gurgling noise.

A pair of arms circled his waist, a hand idly rubbing over his groin—right away he knew it was Abby.

"The girl at the counter said they called this their 'home entertainment' section," she said casually. He turned around and saw her eyeing the contents of that wall with a wicked gleam to her clear blue eyes. "Looks like fun, doesn't it?"

He whimpered and nodded wordlessly, not sure which mental image was hotter: the one of Abby getting tied up under his attention, or the one of _him_ tied down and at her mercy. He had to step outside, feeling suddenly very hot and close in that shop.

He went to go get a cold drink.

"I see you've been busy."

Abby recognized the voice as Olivia's, who'd gathered a small group of men in her day's travels. She grinned at the 'elf' and nodded to the young men chatting to each other behind her.

"So've you, it seems."

"It's my harem. Every year I get one—it's like my little hobby."

"Well, it isn't as if you have to _try_ terribly hard to get them to follow you about, do you?"

She smirked, the smile going all the way up to her little pointed ears. "How are you enjoying the day? Aside from your boyfriend getting so wound up he's basically become a walking erection?"

"It's _fun,"_ she admitted. "I didn't know what to expect or what it'd be like here, but it really is a lot of fun. Connor's got into it all. He's heckling the hecklers."

Olivia laughed. "You're getting into it, too, you know. You've discovered everyone's favourite sport—man-baiting."

She laughed—she couldn't help it. Teasing Connor was proving very fun and she knew she was going to reap the benefits of his excitement as soon as they were alone.

"You're a lucky lady, you know. Those trousers have no secrets and _boy_ does that guy have a big _secret_ to hide!"

Abby laughed harder, leaning on her shoulder for support. This festival-atmosphere was lethal to subtlety and she was enjoying it.

"Wanna do something that'll totally cut off his higher brain function?"

"What?"

She reached into her pouch rummaged about for a bit before she pulled out... a tube of lipstick. Abby half-expected it to be a condom or something. "It's called 'wenching'. You put on a lot of really dark lipstick and kiss anything that'll stand still long enough."

"You're not gonna kiss him, are you? No offense—you're very cute—but he'd be too scared to be turned on by it. As much as he fancies elves."

"Oh, no," she said with a wave of her hand. "I'm not going to kiss him."

"Oh."

"I'm going to kiss _you."_ Her eyes went big and Olivia hastily added, "Not if you don't want to! The idea is to leave a nice big lipstick-print, really."

She looked back across the wide road to where Connor was getting a bottle of water. "Where?" She asked.

"Hm," she hummed in thought for a moment before reaching over and touching the top of her breast, just short of the top of her leather halter. "Here?"

Abby grinned; Olivia's 'boy-harem' had gone quiet and they were watching the two of them. "I love that idea. Wait'll he's on his way over."

Connor was on his way back and ready to say hello to Olivia, but he stopped when she casually applied her lipstick using her cell phone screen for a mirror. Then, as casually as anything, she lunged forward and buried her face in his girlfriend's cleavage, planting perfect a burgundy-red lip-print on Abby's breast. Abby laughed and the four men who seemed to be waiting on Olivia stared with their eyes as wide as turkey platters.

Hell, he was totally doomed. Now it was only a matter of time before he cracked and took Abby right here in front of god and eight-thousand children and the entire faire and _everyone._

"That's a good print, can you see it?" Olivia was asking as Abby, giggling girlishly, looked down at herself.

"Yep! You want one, too?"

"Only right here," she said, pointing at her own lips.

More giggling, but Abby readily agreed. "Okie-dokie!" She leaned forward and gave her a slow, lingering kiss.

He was pretty sure Abby wasn't into girls, not really—at least, she'd never mentioned it before...

Connor was still standing there with his mouth hanging open when the girls parted, and parted _company,_ and Olivia took her group of men with her. As she passed him she gave him an evil little grin before whispering in her ear, "Hey, mate? Those leather bracelet-cuffs your lady is wearing? They aren't bracelets. They're handcuffs. The long strap she's wearing on her bicep connects them through the rings."

Yeah, he was _definitely_ doomed now.


End file.
